laura figueroa-scott

When people first start out in business, it’s pretty common to have a lot of terms thrown at you as if you already know them by other business owners and folks in your niche.

I mean, no one wants to look like they don’t know what is going on.

 I certainly don’t.

And… I certainly have done that very thing.

It feels terrible.

That’s why I am going to break down one of the essential tools you have available to you to make it easier for people to find your website.

I am talking about keywords.

Keywords are the terms we enter in the search bar of our favorite browser to find the things and information we are looking for.

There are two types of keywords: short-tail and long-tail.

Short-tail keywords are very general search terms, using one or two words.

Short-tail keywords are going to give you the largest number of results and images to scroll through to get where you want to go.

The term “red shoes” searched on Google returned over a BILLION search results. The image results went from tennis shoes to high heels to kid shoes to boots.

That’s a lot. Maybe too much.

When you have a general idea of what you are looking for, that’s usually what people do and then scroll through page after page of results, hoping to find what they need or want.

Or, you could refine your search using long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are much more specific search terms, using three or more words.

The terms “red shoes size 10 wide” returned 168 million search results.

Further refining that search term to “red shoes size 10 wide womens” narrowed the results to 137 million.

Even though those numbers are still big, do you see how using more descriptive words in the search bar greatly reduced the number of available results?

As a user on the internet, better, more direct terms help you find items and information quickly.

As a business owner, using the right keywords in your

• title,
• headers,
• meta descriptions,
• blog content,
• and URLs

will make all the difference in making it easier for browsers to include your site in the search results when your niche, product, or service is searched for.

This is what makes up the foundation of search engine optimization or SEO. This is what browsers use to rank their search results when answering a user’s query.

What keywords do you need to use?

You have a lot of tools available to you to find out what  keywords are currently popular in your niche or for your product or service.

But first, get your journal out and think about all of the topics that relate to your product or service and the content you produce currently.

Using that information, make a list of potential keywords and phrases your target audience might use to find your product, service, or content.

Then you can use some tools available to you to expand your list by entering the keywords you have written down.

Three keyword sites that you can use are: Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner.

Each of these sites have free tools available and can help you learn which terms are most popular. Those are the terms that you can use in the list above.

This is an example of some of the data that you can make use of from Google’s Keyword planner:

Here you can see that the more focused search terms rank much higher than general terms in this example. 

When you input your own keywords in any of the tools you choose to use, you will see similar data for your business.

This is the information that can give your business an edge over your competitors, especially when you take the time to revisit this information, making sure your keywords are still among those most searched.

Keywords are the very thing you need to help you stand out online and get the notice you deserve.

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about keywords or content anytime! Just send me a note to laura@laurafigueroascott.me.